to camp at Rolla, arriving here November 15, being out forty-three days, and marching from 1,000 to 1,200 miles, much of the time on short rations, and frequently with no forage.

Officers and men endured this long and arduous campaign without a complaint, regretting most the great loss of horses and the material of war.

Number of men in command at Jefferson City, 623. Number wounded and sent to hospital, 2; number sent to hospital sick, 23; number sent from Springfield to Rolla dismounted, 254; number returned mounted, 190; number dismounted on march, 154; total 623. Some of the men sent from Springfield to Rolla were dismounted, and marched on foot from thirty to forty miles into Springfield. Of the 154 men dismounted on the march, a number of them have come in, others stopped at Kansas City and Fort Scott, and I am advised many of them were furloughed and went home to vote. Number of horses abandoned and lost on the march, 227; number of horses turned over at Springfield and other points, 216; number of horses on hand, unserviceable, 103; number of horses on hand serviceable, 87. Most of the horses were lost and made unserviceable on the march from Little Blue to Springfield, and caused by hard marching and short forage. Number of sets horse equipments lost on the march, 223; number of carbines, &c., lost on the march, 107; number of muskets, 209. The horse equipments were lost by the horses giving out on the march, and it was impossible for the men to carry them. A part of the arms were those of the sick and wounded sent back to the hospital, and were lost on the route, by reason insufficient transportation, and for these neither company commanders nor the men should be held responsible, and a part of the arms were abandoned by the dismounted men, and I have ordered the company commanders to charge all such losses to the men, and have the same stopped against their pay.

I have the honor to remain, your obedient servant,

JOHN L. BEVERIDGE,

Colonel Seventeenth Illinois Cavalry.

Captain C. G. LAURANT,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

Numbers 30. Report of Detachment Second Missouri Cavalry.*

HEADQUARTERS MERRILL'S HORSE,
Camp near Rolla, Mo., November 16, 1864.

SIR: In compliance with General Orders, Numbers 7, headquarters Second Brigade, Rolla, Mo., November 15, 1864, I have the honor to make the following report of the operations of a detachment of the regiment of Merrill's Horse during the last campaign in Missouri:

The detachment, consisting of about 225 veterans (just returned from veteran furlough) and 300 recruits that had never been drilled mounted, and but fifteen or twenty times dismounted, was ordered to be ready to take the field at an hour's notice. Left Benton Barracks, Mo., on the 28th of September, 1864, with orders to picket the Meramec, near Kirkwood, Mo.; remained there until October 1, 1864. The detachment was then ordered to Franklin, on the Pacific Railroad, where it joined

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*The original on file is without the signature of the writer. Captain George M. Houston appears to have been the commander of the detachment.

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